Fade2Gray wrote:I'm starting to think that we need to bring back slavery...

but only enslave all of those who think that shit like this is a good idea. Let's see how awesome they think Neo-Nazism or colonialism is after they've spent 30 years under brutal conditions as a slave.

The rule should be that anyone gets to change society into whatever they please, with the only caveat that they themselves inhabit the lowest rungs of that society.

That's a new take on Rawls -

- but I can see you could make good science fiction out of it.

Grabbed_by_the_Spets wrote:Hung parliament with National in the lead, shame, I really thought this year was going to be the year of change.

I guess the siren call of "MUH TAXES" is just too much...

Couldn't have imagined saying this 20 years ago but nowadays it feels like if there is no change in politics it's a year of victory. It's like people want to go back to the 1930s.

varis wrote:Couldn't have imagined saying this 20 years ago but nowadays it feels like if there is no change in politics it's a year of victory. It's like people want to go back to the 1930s.

This is happening because most people in the west have never been through a major war.

Nationalism, militarism, going your own way, putting up walls all over the place, leaders screaming threats at each other... people have forgotten where that stuff inevitably ends, and if they haven't forgotten where it ends, they've forgotten what it means.

Everyone here except the miniscule number of troops to actually deploy to war zones, and the smaller number of troops who actually engage in combat, experiences war as gun-camera footage on liveleak or the news. Sometimes you hear something about a soldier or marine who died in a rocket attack or a mortar strike. This happens about as often as a death in a training accident or a car crash. That's not what a war against a peer or near peer is like, and people have forgotten it.

What we hear now sounds like the pre-WWI Italian futurists and their 'war is the hygene of nations' crap. It all disappeared after 1915. Hopefully we can watch the current crop of hysterical nationalism disappear without getting a few million people killed.

orcbuster wrote:USSR gets prototype marsupials, why would you need moose when you got stuff with kickers like that AND transport capability? And I'm not even gonna START on the french Marsupilami, I don't even think thats a real animal! Why no trolls for Norway?

varis wrote:Couldn't have imagined saying this 20 years ago but nowadays it feels like if there is no change in politics it's a year of victory. It's like people want to go back to the 1930s.

Simply connecting it to the 1930s and making the historic argument doesn't cut it in my opinion, at least for the German case that is. There are many more aspects behind the revival of the nationalist and far-right political opinion.

Grabbed_by_the_Spets wrote:One of the Aussie PM's stated on national TV that "Coal is the only efficient and reliable form of energy production" and I was legit flabbergasted with the idiocy of that statement.

It adds carbon to the atmosphere and its turns the lungs of the people who mine it into carbon.

While agree that coal is dead form of energy, I hate the how we have all these dead communities full of unemployable coal miners who lack economic opportunity to stay/leave and no one really seems to have a answer. I did ask around and got a few responses like "they should just move" or the "i dont know". If it was option to invest what you have saved up to go move somewhere else with a high chance to find employement, I imagine they would have done that already. Considering that you have invested a lot in area with a home that you almost own, family, just leaving for the nearest city sounds like a difficult decision. Also their is the question of what do we do with those people once they got to the city. I've heard job retraining as a option, although what I guess is another thing.

I also heard they should "learn how to code" because the office they work is looking for more people. Problem though is that college is always free for everyone, especially when lower skill labor with decent wages to pay for school are in short supply. Even then it doesn't stop these companies from pulling off age and disability discrimination. Not mention a lot of these companies think they can only hire the cream of the crop which they perceive be people from big name schools and notable companies.

I imagine it's only going to get worse after these people feel abandoned and start turning towards extremist parties who make empty promises to get them out their current predicament.

Shrike wrote:I imagine it's only going to get worse after these people feel abandoned and start turning towards extremist parties who make empty promises to get them out their current predicament.

I do know that it was part of Hillary's campaign to get these guys into the renewables industry, whether or not that a bag of bricks is beyond me though.

However, in regards to Australia, having situations like that in Australia is entirely Australia's fault, the coal industry there is rather new (~2008) and completely based on boom-bust economics (Reliant entirely on trades with China), not only that, but they've sabotaged similar markets (Sold Holden off to SK, closed off several major manufacturing lines) in order to please the mining lobbies.

Now that China is chugging it's way into the 21st century and doesn't want to buy raw iron and coal, all they've got left is lies, propaganda and baseless retort.

Shrike wrote:I imagine it's only going to get worse after these people feel abandoned and start turning towards extremist parties who make empty promises to get them out their current predicament.

I do know that it was part of Hillary's campaign to get these guys into the renewables industry, whether or not that a bag of bricks is beyond me though.

However, in regards to Australia, having situations like that in Australia is entirely Australia's fault, the coal industry there is rather new (~2008) and completely based on boom-bust economics (Reliant entirely on trades with China), not only that, but they've sabotaged similar markets (Sold Holden off to SK, closed off several major manufacturing lines) in order to please the mining lobbies.

CloakandDagger wrote:And you're one of the people with the shiny colored name. No wonder the game is in the state it's in.